That's easy, too much water and fertilizer and probably on a vigorous soil. That accounts for the large size and reduces potential sweetness. Add on picked 10-14 days too early and you've got lousy fruit.

Store bought? It was very cold, rainy and cloudy out west this year. All that adds up to some crappy tasting fruit.

I can tell you because I've seen it first hand. California commercial cherries are sprayed with something about every 3-5 days from the end of Feb to harvest in June: a hormone to make the blossoms open earlier; growth hormone; fungicide; pesticide; herbicide; others that I don't know. Plenty of triple fifteen goes down too. And, yes, fruitnut is right: they're picked early and all at once to keep labor costs down and to ship better. I refuse to eat commercial cherries, preferring even commercial bananas if my larder is empty. Loquats are the slam dunk cherry replacement in zone 8 and warmer.

The sweet cherries we bought at Aldis this year were the best we have ever eaten. I have no idea where they were grown or what variety they were, but wish I could grow ones like that! Northwoodswis

Same here, this year must have been the best and longest season with BC Cherries...about 2 month, still have in the fridge bought 2 day's ago, large black...think they're Lapins.

Store cherries for me this year were lousy starting out. But recently have been quite good. That is a trend I have seen for several years running now. Seems as if the wholesalers want to unload the low quality stock first. Then gradually proceeding to better quality from there. Right now for me is the best overall quality all season - color, flavor, firmness, and price (@$2.50/lb!). So is definitely time to indulge one's self before there are none.

There is no research I could find supporting the correlation between low brix and high N fertilization but I found research that indicates it has no correlation and quite a bit of it. I checked out the research after someone challenged me when I made the assertion of just such a correlation.

Water is, of course, another issue. Sun and temps have a lot to do with brix also and conditions were cool and wet right into early summer up and down the west coast this year.

Early bearing varieties tend to be lower brix- probably just because there is less time to store sugar, but there is marketing incentive to pick earliest varieties even earlier than they should be. That wouldn't tend to be the case later on.

Well no excuse for the pears, a lot of them are better ripened off the tree.

I used to buy cherries at the store and farmers market. Then one year a client of mine who owned a cherry orchard said he would bring in their last picks of the season. They saved them for the workers and he said they will go bad in a few days. He brought me that box and I've never had cherries so soft and sweet, just unreal. I kept them in the fridge but like he said they had gone bad in maybe 3-4 days (was a huge box i should have froze some). I can't eat cherries anymore. They all taste under ripe, even from the farmers market. The same holds true for figs. A friend let me pick some off his tree, the were mission figs and so ripe that they were wrinkling and almost fermented. Every fig I eat now tastes watery.

Lesson: Any fruit that becomes soft when ripe (on the plant) will always be sold under ripe so that it can be packed, shipped, and stored without getting damaged. This is my first year with cane berries and just leaving a raspberry in the morning that looks ready to go and waiting till the late afternoon where it falls off from an ever so slight pull makes a big taste difference.

Cherry farmers in central California lost about 85% of their crop due to late rains. Probably splits and mold.

I haven't picked cherries since about '86, but we'd start out color-picking Vans (the first-ripening variety back then) because the earlier to market the better the price.

I can't imagine eating store-bought cherries. I've eaten them so big, fat, ripe and flavorful (not just sweet), straight off the tree, that nothing less will do.

Just thinking about them makes my mouth water.

Agreed. I planted some cherries, both sweet and sour a couple of years ago, and got some decent yields this year. There is quite a difference in taste when you let them ripen on the tree.